You might be interested in a study by Midori et al called "Does Simile Comprehension Differ from Metaphor Comprehension?: A functional MRI Study" (Hokkaido University). There is also Andrew Johnson's "Comprehension of metaphors and Similes: A Reaction Time Study" (1996) which suggests that metaphors are more quickly comprehended than similes.

What do you want to test?

Metaphors are interesting because they extend far beyond current AI and linguistics approaches: They assume a multimodal sensory representation of the world. Douglas Hofstadter did some symbolic work in analogies, but the symbolic representation approach has severe limitations due to its distance from sensory representation and the currently still crude symbolic learning algorithms. You may also want to read: Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought by Peter Gärdenfors. And: Jan J. Koenderink (1990). The brain, a geometry engine, Psychological Research, Volume 52, Issue 2-3, pp 122-127. Such theories point to experiments where the absence and presence of visual stimuli in different conditions is subtly used, rather than framing the experiment into a verbal, syllogistic reasoning paradigm. Stimuli can be constructed on the basis of the hypothesized distance between metaphor elements and the source concept, preferably gradual, in multiple steps per metaphor, instead of the boring two-bars graph and an ANOVA by (old school) psychologists.

Dear Yanxia, since you've included 'Pattern Recognition' among your topics, I'd like to show you an interesting text analysis approach by Brad Pasanek and D. Scully:

Mining millions of metaphors

http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/fqn010?ijkey=xozoWg8zCR97Jat&keytype=ref

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/papers/millionMetaphors.pdf

Meaning and mining: the impact of implicit assumptions in data mining for the humanities

http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/fqn019?ijkey=z3J27nmCeJkZuTz&keytype=ref

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/papers/meaningAndMining.pdf

Dear all, sorry for my absence.

The above are so useful for me to understand the literature of metaphors. To be more specific, anyone know about the research on metaphor and embodied cognition?

I am planning to do some cross-culture surveys on metaphor and embodied cognition.

Right now i just have some basic ideas, try to put them together.

Thank you in advance!

I will update more details on this topic.

You probably already have these basic studies by George Lakoff and colaborators, but I'll mention them here just in case; the references may be useful for casual visitors to this thread as well:

Lakoff, George, “The contemporary theory of metaphor,” en Metaphor and thought, 4th. printing of the 2nd. ed., Andrew Ortony, editor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 201-251.

Lakoff, George, Women, fire, and dangerous things, what categories reveal about the mind, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark, Metaphors we live by, 2nd. ed., Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark, Philosophy in the flesh, the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought, New York, Basic Books, 1999.

Lakoff, George; Kövecses, Zoltán, “The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English,” in Cultural models in language and thought, reimpresión, Dorothy Holland y Naomi Quinn, editoras, Cambridge/Londres/ Nueva York/New Rochelle/Melbourne/Sydney, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 195-221.

Here's a review:

Geck, Sabine, “Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark: Philosophy in the flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. Basic Books, Nueva York, 1999. 624 pp.” (review), in Revista de Filología Alemana (Universidad Complutense), no. 8, 2000, pp. 315-317.

Thanks, David! I do have the references of these basic studies by Lakoff and his collaborators. Thanks for sharing in this thread.

Example of stimulus material in three modes (grades of sensory representation) for the 'falling domino stones' metaphor:

0) Text: "They fell like dominos"

1) [falling dictators, cartoon] client.globecartoon.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/GCAdmin.woa/wa/jpgImage?UID=1001923

2) [image of falling dominos] www.empowernetwork.com/queensandi/files/2013/02/dominos-falling.jpg

since a metaphor is a container for meaning (acc. Lakoff: metaphors we live by), either a linguistic expression/or perhaps a visualization of a meaning, I would push you to evaluate all levels.

Think of it as: Idea as Object(meaning/concept)...wrapped with a metaphor(container), which COULD be a ling. expression (e.g. the foot of the mountain).....communication by transferring the meaning in the metaphor to a recepient.

Im currently working with questioning foundations of metaphors in IT and their potential mismatch with meanings in indigenous communities.

By only questioning the metaphor(possibly created by an designer not sharing the same meaning as a stakeholder) you will only be able to evaluate the meaning held by the designer.

Im not sure if you can use it, but let me know if you need more.

Best,

Hi Kasper, thanks for your comments. I think you are right about some part. I am currently working on my dissertation, which is focused on metaphor and embodied cognition. I would love to do some experiments on making a new metaphor and metaphorical understanding too. I wonder if there are some typical experiments that I can rely on?

Best.

Yanxia, seeing your remarks on metaphor and embodied cognition, I wonder if you know the French poet Stéphane Mallarme's theory of ballet (and by extension, theatre in general) as a universal metaphor. See ¨Crayonné au Théatre¨. That is, the body pantomimes something else, like a flower or a sword.

Dear Nelson, I don't know that metaphor. Thanks for sharing. It is intersting. I try to google the meaning of "¨Crayonné au Théatre". Google translation showed me something like "pencil in a theater" :) I know that pantomime mean "a performance using gestures and body movements without words", so I wonder how pantomimes are related to a sword? Can you explain a little more about this?

Thank you!

Certainly I can explain, Yanxia.  A ballet dance expresses meaning with different positions of her body. She becomes a living metaphor, so that her own body represents the forms of something difficult. A sword is straight and cuts. Therefore she can extend her two arms upward placing them together and pointing them straight over her head. In this fashion she resembles a sword as much as a human body can! She may even use cutting, angular movements with her extended arms to imitate the slicing movements of a sword.  Does this make my meaning clear?   "Crayonné" signifies something like "scribbling" or crayon markings.

 Simulation of analogy making, taking the metaphor of a "copycat"

Article Analogy-Making as a Complex Adaptive System

Article The copycat project: A model of mental fluidity and analogy-making